Women of Resistance from OR Books @ Hyperallergic
When I picked up Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, a collection of poems by 49 female-identified poets published by OR Books, I hoped to report that feminist poetry — and the new feminism that it represents — would not be a tragic, polemic trudge through the trash-pile that patriarchy has made of the world and women’s lives. I joked to a friend and fellow writer that I should make “Feminist Poetry Bingo” cards and rate the collection (edited by Village of Crickets co-founding editors Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan) by how long it took me to hit a bingo. In other words, I had misgivings about what I suspected to be the major topics covered by the all-start line-up of featured poets.
“Our hope is that readers engage thoughtfully with the work, and attempt to open themselves up to the infinitely varied experiences of women of resistance,” said Mahan, in an email interview, during which I expressed some of my frustrations with the most common tropes of “Feminist” poetry. She added, “One of my favorite things about the anthology format is its tendency to be nonlinear, and as with poetry (and all art), some days a piece hits me hard, and on another day, it doesn’t resonate as deeply. As editors, we welcome those kinds of wavering responses to this anthology. It is a good thing that you could feel turned on or off by any poem at a certain moment because that kind of reading is the truest representation of the varied, complicated, and utterly nonsensical ways we as humans process our experiences.”
Read more here…